


Birthday Gifts

by Bekkoni



Category: DCU, DCU (Animated), Justice League, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Presents, Embarrassment, Fluff, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:42:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bekkoni/pseuds/Bekkoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark is on a mission to find something that Bruce wants for his birthday. He ends up finding out a lot more than he bargained for, and a lot more than Bruce ever wanted him to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday Gifts

Clark was never one to lose a story. He’d worked for six months on a piece about a Colombian drug ring once, persevering even though three of his main sources had turned tail and clammed up. After Lois, he was probably the next best researcher at the _Planet_. Which was why he was going to the best source of all for his hardest question.

“Alfred,” he said, sitting at the counter in Wayne Manor’s kitchen with a stack of cookies by his elbow, “what does Bruce want for his birthday?”

“Heaven only knows, Mister Kent.” The butler was standing by the stove, stirring a pot of something that smelled so good that it ought to be served on Olympus.  “My gift to him every year is that I continue to serve him for another year with only mildly disapproving looks, rather than retiring to a nice English beach where I can spend the rest of my days with a stack of novels.”

Clark rested his head on his hands, watching Alfred cook. “Really? No ideas for me at all?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. The last time I knew what would please Master Bruce, he was seven and all it took to get him to cartwheel through the room was a Grey Ghost action figure.”

Clark needed a minute to process that image. Unfortunately, it still didn’t give him any ideas. “Can I try out a few ideas on you, then?”

“Certainly.” While Alfred was chopping carrots, Clark pulled a notebook out from his bag. He’d been thinking this over for a week and a half, ever since he had bribed Robin to find out when Bruce’s birthday actually was. Apparently, birthdays were one of the things that boyfriends were not allowed to know in Bruce’s world.

"Okay.” Clark flipped the notebook open to the first page. Half the items on his list had already been crossed off, having been crossed off because they were too ridiculous, not “Bruce” enough, too generic, or just plain wrong. “What about a big party, with all of the Justice League? The founding members, at least.”

“Lots of people? For Master Bruce?”

Clark sighed. “You’re right. He’d be glaring at me all night long. What about a nice bathrobe? He is, after all, a rich guy who doesn’t own one. That’s kind of backwards.”

“Perhaps it is. But for five minute cold showers, I don’t think he believes a bathrobe is worth it. Maybe you should think less about things Master Bruce wants—because we are both well aware that those things are few and far between—and more about things that are important to the two of you. What did you do for your first date? Master Thomas always recreated his and Missus Wayne’s first date for their anniversary.”

Clark grimaced involuntarily. “It was bad tomato soup in the Watchtower cafeteria. And the only way I could get Bruce to stop working for half an hour was because we’d just gotten back from a mission where he broke his ankle and got a mild concussion.”

“Ah,” Alfred said, while he finished stirring the soup. “Perhaps that isn’t something one would want to repeat.”

“True.” Clark reexamined his list, and could not find one solitary thing that would actually please Bruce. “Okay. Let me think here. I suppose he’d be happy if I got him, like, a stack of batarangs or something, but I’d like it to be something actually fun. Say what _does_ Bruce do on his days off? Maybe that would give me an idea.”

“Days off?” Alfred turned around, wiping off his spoon on his apron, with a look of confusion on his face. “Master Bruce doesn’t _have_ days off, unless I suppose he’s forced to by an injury.”

“No…” Clark pulled out his phone to check the Watchtower’s member roster. “He takes a day off every six months. Like clockwork. Look, he had one last Wednesday.”

“ _I_ had a day off last Wednesday.” Alfred went to the calendar hanging on the wall ( _Scenes of the English Countryside_ , as Clark noticed with a smile) and flipped back six months. “And six months ago. Dick and Tim were away last Wednesday and then as well.”

Clark put down his notebook. “So Bruce schedules days off and then takes them when no one else is home? What could he be doing?”

Before they had the chance to try and puzzle out this mystery, Bruce came jogging into the kitchen looking like he’d just run a 10k. He ignored both of them and went straight to the stove, serving himself up a heaping bowl of soup with no more of a greeting than “Mmm. Food.”

He plunked himself down on the seat next to Clark (who quickly shoved the notebook away) and hunkered down over his bowl like he hadn’t eaten in a week. After he’d scraped it clean, in a surprisingly short amount of time no less, he asked, “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Clark answered smoothly.

Bruce scanned them both with a darkly examining glare, one eyebrow piqued with suspicion. But eventually he apparently decided that food was better right now than getting to the bottom of whatever was going on, and he scraped his bowl clean with the side of his spoon. He even gazed longingly at the pot like he wanted another bowl, but then sighed and turned around to be social. “So why exactly were you looking for me? Has Wally broken something on the Watchtower again? Did we finally get the evidence from the Blackgate breakout to analyze?”

“No,” Clark said, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes or sigh in exasperation. “I just like seeing you.”

Bruce stood up to drop his bowl into the sink. “I thought we had an agreement that you weren’t going to give into sentimentality in this thing.”

“Saying that I like seeing you isn’t being overly sentimental in _our relationship_.” Clark turned to Alfred for support. “C’mon, Alfred, back me up here.”

“My apologies, Mister Kent, but my own agreement with Master Bruce is that I not comment upon his romantic affairs to his face,” Alfred said, with a knowing wink, while he cleaned off his cutting board.

“And I’d appreciate it if you stuck to it,” Bruce muttered, while stamping around the kitchen pretending to actually be busy. “Seriously, Clark, what do you want?”

Clark hesitated for a minute, but then decided that there was no better time than the present. Bruce, not being one to ever reveal _anything_ personal about himself, would probably just shut him down or glare at him without giving him any answers at all if he was in a bad mood. Right now, Clark couldn’t actually figure out if Bruce was grouchy or just tired, but he went for it anyways. “I had a question for you, actually. What is it you do on your off days?”

Bruce, for once was startled. He blinked, and then recovered. “Huh?”

“Seriously. What do you do on your days off? I’m curious.” Clark fixed him with a long, interested stare that Bruce couldn’t wriggle out of it.

Weirdly enough, Bruce glanced at Alfred, like a kid who was hiding a broken vase under his bed. Alfred caught the look and just appeared confused. Clark saw him wrinkle his brow, like he was trying to figure out what on earth might actually _embarrass_ Bruce. Clark too was pulling a blank.

Finally, Bruce’s eyes went to his feet. “Nothing important.”

“Oh, come on now.” Clark leaned forward. This was now far more interesting than just finding birthday gift ideas. “Do tell us this big secret.”

“It’s not a secret,” Bruce mumbled, while searching for an escape. “It just doesn’t matter.”

“Then who cares if you tell us?” Clark asked, and Bruce backed against the wall like a trapped animal. “Honestly.”

"I don’t see why it’s so important to you. I don’t interrogate you on what you do on your days off. I don’t care.” Bruce turned away to get a cup of water.

“I’m interested in you.” Clark tried very, very hard not to look too overly eager. It was apparent from the way that Alfred was obsessively polishing the same glass that he was trying to be disinterested as well. “And for your information, on my day off I usually go to the library, fly out to the moon to read for awhile, and then get Chinese food before taking a long shower. There. Now you don’t have to interrogate me.”

Bruce drank his water to avoid having to answer or respond at all.

Clark moved so he was in front of the door. “Now you have to tell me, so we’ll be even. It can’t be that bad.”

“I just—” Bruce began, and then snapped his mouth shut again just as quickly.

“What was that?” Clark asked.

Bruce threw his hands in the air, nearly flinging his glass into the wall. “Fine, okay? Fine! I just stay home and watch old musicals and eat pizza and chocolate ice cream. There! Are you happy?”

Alfred looked equal parts scandalized and hurt. “Pizza, Master Bruce? From a… _fast food pizzeria_?” He said it with such disdain that Clark understood why Bruce didn’t want his surrogate father to know there were times he chose junk food over Alfred’s cooking.

“Old musicals?” Clark asked. “Really?”

Bruce was doing everything he could not to turn red, but it wasn’t working. Clark would never dare tell him this, but when he was truly embarrassed he blushed up to his ears. “I like them, okay? I’m human, I have my vices.”

“ _Musicals_?” Clark said again. “I wouldn’t exactly call that a vice. Although for _you_ …”

“Oh, shut up Kent.” Bruce managed to recover some of his Batman-essence and ducked out the door around Clark, although not before looking guiltily once more at Alfred. “I have work to do.”

“Pizza!” Alfred muttered, after his ward had left. “After all the work I do to make bloody wheatgrass drinks every morning and snacks all hours of the day and night. Pizza!”

Clark decided he’d best make his escape before he found out what happened when Alfred was actually angry (an occurrence he had been fortunate enough to never encounter before). But at least he now had an idea for Bruce’s birthday.

****&****

Bruce came upstairs after a day of working down in the Cave (repairing the Batmobile, which had been clogged with mud after an incident with Clayface; checking on the Arkham security cameras; and running over the evidence for a murder case that he just couldn’t crack yet) to find Clark standing in the kitchen, a match in hand. His suspicions naturally arose. “What are you doing, trying to burn the house down?”

“No…” Clark said, and lit the match. Bruce followed the light down to a cake sitting on the counter, and groaned. “Have you forgotten what day it is?”

“I swear, Clark, if everyone is hiding in the parlor or something, they will never find your body.”

Clark smiled, and blew out the match. “Nope. It’s just us.”

Bruce poked his head into the hallway and listened carefully, just to make sure Clark was being truthful. He didn’t even hear Tim and Dick moving around in their rooms, or Alfred walking about upstairs. Certainly if Clark had decided to torture him with a party, he would’ve invited Wally, and Wally wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut for very long. “Then what’s going on here?”

“Well,” Clark said, holding up two DVD cases, “I thought we’d eat pizza and cake and then watch a couple of movies. Say, _Easter Parade_ and _Doll Face_? You like those ones, right?”

“How did you know?” he was now genuinely curious.

Clark shrugged, like it was really no bother. “I looked at all of your discs for wear. These ones had the most.”

“That must have taken you awhile.”

“A couple of hours.” Clark pointed to the cake, which he had strategically adorned with slightly fewer candles than was actually called for. “Come on. Aren’t you going to slice it? It’s chocolate.”

Bruce picked up the knife, cut two thick slices from the cake, and gave the first one to Clark. “You put an awful lot of planning into this.”

Clark peered at him and grinned. “Is that an actual Bruce Wayne smile I see?”

“I was just thinking about how I’m going to have to top this for your birthday.”

“Aw,” Clark said, and picked up the first DVD case. “Now come on, you’re going to tell me what you see in these things.”


End file.
